Wednesday, April 26, 2006

What to do and what NOT to do about gas prices

DO- Reduce fuel consumption. Walk or ride a bike to your destination when you can. Drive the smallest vehicle with the smallest engine that suits your needs. Join a car pool if you can.

DON'T- Don't pin your hopes on the federal or state government investigating price gouging. The government doesn't have to investigate what people report regularly. If a gas station were to try and charge $5 a gallon, people would rat that place out. Of course, the libertarian solution to price gouging is to not shop at any place that charges too much for gas. If the gas gauge is on "E" and the next gas station wants to charge higher than average, only buy enough to get to the next gas station.

DO- Build more power plants. There are still oil powered power plants in the US. This strikes me as an incredible waste when electricity can be generated so many other ways.

There is nothing that the government can do to increase the amount of oil that is being pumped out of the ground, nor is there anything that can be done to increase the amount of crude oil in the earth's crust. Now that India and China are rapidly becoming nations of cars instead of bicycles, the demand for oil is rapidly increasing with no increase in supply. I hate to say this, but you all are just going to have to deal with high gas prices.

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